"Kuso!"

Everything was happening so fast. Gojyo barely had the time to ground out his impassioned curse before he sank his shakujou into another body, rending soul from flesh. His skin was slick with blood, but he couldn't tell if it was his own, or if it belonged any one of the many bodies that littered the field. A white-hot pain ripped through his back, letting him know there was yet another blade-wielding youkai behind him that needed to be dealt with quickly. He turned quickly, watching as the hungry metal gorged itself in demon blood. He could hear Sanzo's shoureiju firing in quick, mindless successes, letting Gojyo know, at the very least, that Sanzo was still alive. Once again, Gojyo was prompted to turn, this time at the demented battle cry of an already wounded youkai who quickly joined his fallen comrades. Gojyo looked up from the corpse in time to see Hakkai fall, a youkai blade cruelly shoved into the space between his shoulder blades. Gojyo's voice sounded odd to him, hoarse as he screamed Hakkai's name. Perhaps it was because he rarely screamed, but he barely recognized the frantic voice that had come from his mouth as his own. He had every intention of hacking a path to Hakkai's aid, but suddenly there were three other youkai on him, and all thoughts of Hakkai were forced from his head.

They had never intended on getting separated during a battle. However, the closer they drew to Gyumaoh, the more frequently they were beset with youkai warriors, and the more competent those warriors seemed to be. This time the Sanzo-ikkou had started out fighting together, but in the chaos of battle, they had been forced apart.

An eerie silence had descended on the blood soaked field as Gojyo worked to pull his blade out of his final corpse, exhausted. At last, it seemed to have ended. He looked around him, strangely detached. The battle seemed like it had lasted for days. The field was littered with corpses, and he could only wonder how many of them had been torn to pieces by his shakujou. He heard the dull padding of slow footsteps from behind, and he turned to see Sanzo. The monk's ivory robes were stained with a combination of blood and dirt. He clutched at his right arm, and in his trembling right hand, his faithful gun was still clenched tightly. Not far behind him, Goku was making his way towards them, using his Nyoi-Bo as a crutch.

"Oi, Gojyo," Sanzo said when at last he stood before him. "You hurt badly?"

"I don't know," Gojyo replied honestly. So filled with adrenaline fueled by rarely felt terror, he was still too numb to assess the amount of damage that had been inflicted. He did know that he would definitely be in some serious pain come tomorrow morning. "You?"

"'Ch," Sanzo scoffed. "Don't worry about me."

"Hey," Goku panted, resting heavily on the Nyoi-Bo, "Where's Hakkai?"

Gojyo's eyes widened. He turned his head towards the rise and saw Hakkai receive the blow that had made him fall again. Gojyo's mind replayed the event in slow motion, showing every agonizing detail in brutal clarity: how Hakkai's bloodless lips parted in a silent scream, how his body arched so delicately as a jet of crimson issued from deep in his throat, how the youkai had descended upon his fallen body like a flock of vultures…

"Chikushō!" he cursed, running as fast as he could towards that hill, the others following in hot pursuit.

Gojyo tore across the field, calling out the name of his missing friend in-between rattling off some blistering curses. Sanzo and Goku had taken up the search as well, shifting through corpses and filling the silence with the chorus of a name.

"Damn it! Hakkai!" Gojyo cried again, his voice breaking at the end as his emotions began to rise. The idea of Hakkai's body lying lost in the sea of youkai corpses was making him ill. Or even worse, imagining him dying alone among the bodies of his murderers, too weak to respond to his friends. He didn't deserve to die like that. Then, he saw it: a piece of jade green fabric sticking up from among the dark bodies. Hakkai hadn't risen from the place where he fell. Gojyo ran towards the fabric and, after shoving off a lifeless youkai, revealed the pale face of Hakkai. There was a deep gash on his left cheek that only oozed a slow stream of blood, as if it had bleed all it could and was tired now. His monocle was gone, lost forever in the gory field. His eyes were closed.

"Hakkai," Gojyo rasped, his eyes moving quickly over his body. His clothes were torn, revealing numerous gashes that marred his slender body. Gojyo's throat constricted painfully when Hakkai remained silent. Unwilling to accept the idea that he was dead, Gojyo gathered Hakkai's limp upper body into his arms, holding him carefully. The hand he kept on his back was quickly greeted by something wet. Positioning Hakkai against his chest, he moved his hand into his line of vision, repulsed to see his tanned skin stained dark crimson. Gojyo's head was reeling. This wasn't happening… "Hey, Hakkai. Look at me, ne? Come on, open your eyes…"

After what seemed like an eternity, Gojyo's desperate efforts were rewarded by the sluggish opening of a pair of shockingly green eyes. They focused slowly, and then locked onto the pair of wine-red eyes that stared back. Gojyo let out a tight breath he hadn't known he was holding. "Hey, man. You scared the hell out of me just now."

"Gojyo," Hakkai murmured. A fresh trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth accompanied his faint voice, and he found with grim resignation that even a single word had left him breathless. Hakkai hadn't been dreaming, then. The others had really been looking for him. By the way Gojyo sat with him, he felt it was safe to assume that the battle was over, at least for now. His chest was on fire, and each breath was more difficult than the last, but he refused to be silent. "The…the others?"

"They're fine," Gojyo quickly assured him, wondering why he couldn't pay more attention to his own well being at the moment. "How about you, ne? Think you can get up?" he asked, about to help him rise, but Hakkai weakly shook his head.

"There's blood in my lungs," Hakkai said after drawing a shallow breath. "Just stay here. It wont be long."

Gojyo stared down at the young man who trembled in his arms. He hadn't seen him look so pale since the night that he found him lying half dead across the path that he always took to go home from a night spent at the local tavern. He had saved him once, and the idea that he was just going to sit here and wait for him to die now after all they had been through, after all the time Hakkai had been their to save his ass, did not sit well with him. "We'll find a way to fix it," he muttered absently, wondering how far away it was to the next town where they might find a doctor as he called for Goku and Sanzo. He always thought it was moronic how Hakkai could heal others, but it was beyond his power to heal himself.

Goku was the first one to arrive, plopping himself down besides Hakkai, his golden eyes wide at seeing Hakkai look so weak. It scared him, and Hakkai knew it. Goku had always looked up to Hakkai as the calm one, the cook, mediator, and the healer. Now, to see him like this, lying in Gojyo's arms, blood trickling from his mouth, must have been greatly upsetting. Hakkai raised his white lips in a small smile, reaching out with a trembling hand, which Goku quickly grasped.

"Hakkai," the boy began, golden eyes searching green. "You're gonna be okay, right?"

The elder youkai opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by Sanzo as he turned his gaze towards the West. "You've got to be fucking kidding…"

Turning their heads, the gazed in silence at another band of youkai warriors approached from the distance, fresh and ready for the fight. Gojyo was the first to break the silence with a single word that adequately summed up all the thoughts running through their minds.

"Fuck."

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

"Aw, crap," Goku moaned, the next to break the silence, his golden eyes resting mournfully on the approaching troops. "What are we going to do now? Hakkai's hurt bad, Sanzo's arm's messed up–"

"My arm's fine," Sanzo growled through clenched teeth, though this seemingly went unnoticed by Goku, who continued to run through the list of their most obvious injuries.

"– an' Gojyo's bleedin', too. What're we gonna do?"

It was obvious that Goku's question had not been directed at anyone in particular, but it was one that Sanzo was grappling with even before he asked it. His hand tightened on his shoureiju until his knuckles had turned white. Nothing would be gained from trying to run away. The youkai would just catch up, and then overtake them, resulting in the battle they had tried to avoid. They had no choice but to stay and fight again. The real question was what could they do to actually win that fight. Having Hakkai fight in his current state would have been a suicidal mission, and Goku's leg was mangled; he'd noticed he'd had trouble walking the field when they were trying to find Hakkai. That left only himself and Gojyo who, at the moment, looked like he's rather die than let go of Hakkai's slowly failing body. Sanzo could feel the anger rising within him, numbing his pain and fatigue.

"Damn it!" he burst out as his rage reached his peek, startling the other three, their attention now locked on Sanzo. "Goku, you stay with Hakkai. Protect him as best as you can. Gojyo, you come with me and fight."

Gojyo opened his mouth, but nothing came out. What could he say? Among their frighteningly limited options, Sanzo's words sounded like the only choice. Surprisingly, it was Hakkai who spoke out.

"You'll never win," he said simply, successfully raising Sanzo's lethal ire just that much more with the infuriating truth.

"So what the fuck do you propose we do?" he yelled, fire blazing from his drooping purple eyes. "Just sit here like fucking ducks?"

Hakkai shook his head, and raised his free hand to wipe the blood away from his mouth before speaking. "Let me heal the worst of your wounds as best as I can, and then remove my limiters. I'll be able to fight that way."

Sanzo shook his head, barely giving Hakkai's words any thought. "No."

"Please, don't be stupid," Hakkai sighed, catching everyone off guard. Had Hakkai actually insinuated that Sanzo was being…stupid? Death has made him bold, Gojyo thought. Goku reasoned that if he wasn't so close to dying, Hakkai would have undoubtedly receive his first taste of Sanzo's harisen. A vein throbbed at Sanzo's temple, but his voice was low and controlled. "You'll die if you fight."

"I'm am going to die either way."

Everyone fell quiet for a moment. The casualness and certainty with which Hakkai spoke of his own death was unnerving, especially to Goku, who tightened his grip on Hakkai's hand, holding it closer to his chest. Death was a constant threat as they continued on their journey. It was a risk that they had long since acknowledged, and each one had come to face it more than once already. Somehow, though, they had always emerged triumphant, and though none of them ever spoke of it, it felt as if they would never actually die. Not only would Hakkai's death be painful in and of itself, but also it would end the idea of their seeming immortality; if Hakkai could die – good, gentle Hakkai - then they all could.

"Whatever," was Sanzo's only replied as he turned his back to Hakkai.

Goku's leg was first to receive the healer's attentive care. The bone had been broken, but overall the break was not bad- merely a hairline fracture, but more than enough to be painful for the young boy.

"You're gonna be okay," Goku said quietly to Hakkai as he worked on healing his leg, although it was unclear who he was trying to reassure more: Hakkai, or himself. Hakkai only smiled, and then moved onto Gojyo, whose wounds were crying out for his attention.

"Don't tire yourself out too much on me," Gojyo muttered as he felt the familiar warmth of healing chi flow into his back. Broken veins mended, sliced muscle healed, and the torn skin stitched itself back together, turning pink and new. Gojyo was glad his wounds were on his back; he'd never been able to watch Hakkai heal him. Though he never admitted it, the sight turned his stomach. It took the effort of all three of them to finally coax Sanzo into letting Hakkai heal his arm. Sanzo always wanted complete independence, never wanting to rely on the charity and kindness of someone else, but right now he simply didn't want to be a burden to Hakkai. Already after healing the other two, the light in his emerald eyes had dulled considerably, and his breathing had become more labored. The last thing he wanted was more blood on his hands, more guilt on the conscious he never paid attention to unless it rained during the night.

Sanzo's arm had taken a good hit during the fight, and the wound was still bleeding quite heavily. Sanzo watched with angry eyes as Hakkai rose up onto his knees and hovered his trembling hand just above the jagged gash, an orb of gentle green light forming in the space between. In a short time, the wound had closed. Hakkai parted his lips, obviously intent on saying something, but his body began to fall backwards, too weak to remain upright.

Gojyo was there, catching him easily and holding him protectively as he trembled against his chest. The sounds of the approaching youkai were growing nearly steadily, their ceaseless footsteps like the fatal tolling of a bell.

"Go on," Gojyo told the other two. "We'll join up in a second; I'll watch out for him until then."

"Right!" Goku said as he took up his Nyoi-bo. Sanzo merely nodded before heading off with Goku to pick off what youkai they could during the initial onslaught of fighting.

Gojyo felt Hakkai stirring against him, but he held tight. "Just rest for a second. Nothing's going to happen to them, or you. Not while I'm here," Gojyo soothed, wishing he could force some of his life into Hakkai's slowly failing body, but the best he could do was hold his shivering form and offer his soft, sappy words.

"I'm ready, Gojyo," Hakkai replied after a few moments. The battle cries of youkai were drawing dangerously near. "Take off my limiters, and put them in your pocket, please."

Gojyo hesitated. "You're sure about this?"

The resolution in Hakkai's eyes shocked Gojyo. "Do it."

After a moment of deafening silence, the limiters fell with a muted clink into Gojyo's waiting hand.